You knew they would be, right?
House Republicans have started to weigh a series of legislative proposals targeting Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, part of a broader campaign to slash federal spending that could force the new majority to grapple with some of the most difficult and delicate issues in American politics.
Only weeks after taking control of the chamber, GOP lawmakers under new Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) have rallied around firm pledges for austerity, insisting their efforts can improve the nation’s fiscal health. They have signaled they are willing to leverage the fight over the debt ceiling — and the threat of a fiscal doomsday — to seek major policy concessions from the Biden administration.
So far, the party has focused its attention on slimming down federal health care, education, science and labor programs, perhaps by billions of dollars. But some Republicans also have pitched a deeper examination of entitlements, which account for much of the government’s annual spending — and reflect some of the greatest looming fiscal challenges facing the United States.
In recent days, a group of GOP lawmakers has called for the creation of special panels that might recommend changes to Social Security and Medicare, which face genuine solvency issues that could result in benefit cuts within the next decade. Others in the party have resurfaced more detailed plans to cut costs, including by raising the Social Security retirement age to 70, targeting younger Americans who have yet to obtain federal benefits.
“We have no choice but to make hard decisions,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), the leader of the Republican Study Committee, a bloc of more than 160 conservative lawmakers that endorsed raising the retirement age and other changes last year. “Everybody has to look at everything.”
Any plan to rethink entitlements is likely to face steep opposition in the Democratic-led Senate and may never gain meaningful traction even among other Republicans in the House. Adding to the political challenge, former president DonaldTrump waded into the debate Friday, warning his party publicly against cutting “a single penny from Medicare or Social Security.”
Democrats, meanwhile, have been unsparing in their criticisms, saying millions of Americans could see their benefits cut at the hands of the new House GOP majority. President Biden has stressed he will not negotiate such a deal with Republicans, as he prepares to discuss a raft of fiscal issues with McCarthy in the coming days.
“This is something that should be done without conditions, and we should not be taking hostage key programs that the American people really earned and care about — Social Security, Medicare, it should not be put in a hostage situation,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday.
The early wrangling underscores the stakes as Republicans look for aggressive ways to limit federal spending. In a time of immense, growing debt, the party’s looming decisions could carry vast consequences: Every cut in Washington, large or small, threatens to spell dramatic changes for millions of Americans’ finances — not to mention the GOP’s own political fortunes.
I think the Democrats need to make it clear that the Republicans are holding the country hostage for massive concessions rather than follow the rules and hash all this out in budget negotiations.
If they want to slash spending to the bone all they need to do is elect a majority in both houses of congress and get a Republican president. That’s how it works. This economic terrorism is undemocratic — which is how they roll these days.
As for chopping SS and Medicare, well, they’ve been trying to do that for many, many decades. It’s in the DNA. But today, it has nothing to do with the anti-communist ideology of “small government” or any libertarian principles which they’ve abandoned. This is just cutting and slashing to own the libs.